I’m not sure I follow all the Twitter blog postage over at Techmeme today, but it appears to boil down to Center Networks speculating that Twitter may fail because it does not have a clear revenue plan and Jason Calcanis suggesting that Twitter does not really need one yet because, as Silicon Valley players, they’ll get funding just because they have demonstrated past success and far more important than a business plan is simply getting to be a bigger player in the social networking space.

I’m certainly more with Jason on this than the (foolish and demonstrably false) notion that success springs from solid business plans.  Sure, it sounds right to suggest planning works, and biz consultants love to see plans because they are 1) a good way to get paid for consulting and 2) it helps people cover their asses in lawsuits and such.   But if you look at the huge and profound success stories in technology you don’t see business plans, you see innovation, risk, and sheer LUCK!    (e.g.  Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Apple, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook etc, etc).

I think you’d be hard pressed to show *any* relationship between a business plans and success in the Tech sector, and probably other biz areas as well.   This is not to say common sense and business sense are not important – they are probably in good measure in most success stories.  But formal planning and business “rules” pale in importance compared to other factors.  

I still think business in Tech, especially in Silicon Valley, is more an evolutionary survival process where companies work *away* from failing rather than towards success.   In fact I’ll be betting on that.